Having trouble finding good mods, suggestions?

[kevineugenius]

Still tooling and tweaking and making notes. I did have to drop my resolution to 2560x1440 after installing some HD textures. I have some stuff that I don't know where it came from, and that's bugging me the most. I'll find it.

 

Anyhoo, I went with the Tamriel Reloaded set and ENB, got some weather mod that's kinda cool but I'd like to take that up a notch. I do have SMIM though I'm not sure exactly what it does when I'm in game; maybe it's good if it's somewhat unnoticeable.

 

Enhanced Lights and FX is my favorite so far; made a huge, huge difference to the realism. I hated seeing someone sitting on a chair next to a fire and having no shadow whatsoever. My favorite so far.

 

Once I get all my tweaking and testing done, I'm going to test several alternate start mods then install Frostfall and start over again.

 

I'll add realistic water two to my list as my water mod doesn't look like it did anything at all. Civil War Overhaul sounds very cool, hadn't heard of bi-phenotypes so I'll see what that is, and page one of this thread still has a dozen or so I haven't tried. Every time I try one thing, it recommends about six others so it takes me hours to test them all and get them configured before deciding if I like them enough to keep them.

 

Also, I was getting FPS stutter right after a new area got loaded (entering/exiting a door). It was suggested that going into windowed mode would fix that, so going with a lower res in windowed mode really ended up fixing more than one thing.

 

I almost need to repeat this process on a different computer and take better notes. Several mods change textures and some state they need to be installed after another mod and overwrite the first mod's textures. So, for example, I've got some houses with really green roofs that I don't much like but I'm not sure which mod did it. There's lots of flowers and blooming trees now, too, and I do like that but I don't know where they came from. Maybe it's just springtime in the game (does it do that?) or something.

 

Skyrim Gems has been good, too. Wish I had found it several weeks ago.

[BlackRoseOfThorns]

 

I have some stuff that I don't know where it came from, and that's bugging me the most. I'll find it.

 

I do have SMIM though I'm not sure exactly what it does when I'm in game; maybe it's good if it's somewhat unnoticeable.

 

SMIM replaces low poly objects and in some cases textures. Mostly furniture and clutter in the LITE version. I'm sure you have noticed new pretty barrels.

http://static-4.nexusmods.com/15/mods/110/images/8655-1-1330485296.jpg

http://static-4.nexusmods.com/15/mods/110/images/8655-1-1330807285.jpg

http://static-6.nexusmods.com/15/mods/110/images/8655-1-1386892128.jpg

 

 

Several mods change textures and some state they need to be installed after another mod and overwrite the first mod's textures. So, for example, I've got some houses with really green roofs that I don't much like but I'm not sure which mod did it. There's lots of flowers and blooming trees now, too, and I do like that but I don't know where they came from. Maybe it's just springtime in the game (does it do that?) or something.

 

Tamriel Reloaded HD adds new trees, flowers and mossy roofs, towns and villages meshes and parallax textures. If it's the farmhouse roof that bothers you, you can try to replace it. Download Skyrim Realistic Overhaul - Farm and install it last ot just get thatch02.dds /_n.dds, thatch03.dds /_n.dds (in textures/architecture/farmhouse). There might be an additional moss aplied with shader or mesh, but I don't have an idea how to deal with it without checking the meshes in nifskope. Just grab those textures and replace the ones in your data folder, launch skyrim and see how it looks. In case you ment Whiterun wood houses, replace wrdragontile01.dds /_n.dds/_p.dds with dragontile01st.dds/_n.dds/_p.dds (copy and rename > overwrite).

[kevineugenius]

That was my suspicion on both things but hadn't tested it out yet.

 

Now that I have good textures for everything the body textures are looking wimpy again so I'm going to play with that more. The screenshots the authors post look better than mine.

 

I have CBBE, apachii, CBBE skin texture (navetsea i think), female face retexture (same as skin), and battle hardened body mod. According to battle hardened body, I should installed CBBE body mod (did it) and a textureset (he suggested navetsea, so I did that) but his screenshots and mine look pretty different. Even his "before" pics look better than mine do, so he must have something else running. I'm not sure mine doesn't look correct given that I'm running in a playable graphics setting, not a screenshot uber-high details setting. That said, I do wish my stuff looked like his screenshot #4.

[BlackRoseOfThorns]

Try playing around with subsurface scattering in enb settings. You also need a proper _sk.dds body textures for this, I'm not using cbbe so I can't help you there.

 

http://enbdev.com/enbseries/forum/viewtopic.php?f=2&t=2393&start=30

 

From Killers Realistic Skin SSS Patch for Enb

 

[sUBSURFACESCATTERING]
Quality=0
Radius=9.0
Amount=0.35
EpidermalAmount=7.0
SubdermalAmount=7.0
EpidermalDiffuseSaturation=0.88
SubdermalDiffuseSaturation=0.88
EpidermalMix=0.05
SubdermalMix=1.0
SubdermalTranslucency=0.1
SubdermalPhase=0.69

 

[EFFECT]
EnableSubSurfaceScattering=true

 

 

Alternative less red skin setting:

EpidermalMix=0.1
SubdermalMix=0.7

 

Some ENBs are customized more towards performance or enviroments then making character skin realistic. You can try playing with the setting a bit. Switching shadows and ssao to high/ultra in quality enb preset (not performance), will bring out the details. Chrck SKYRIM ENB GUIDE by Jenna Watson.

[kevineugenius]

I now have an even 100 mods active and running pretty well. I do get some framerate hits now and then but... maybe at the end of summer I'll rebuild my rig and won't have to worry about that.

 

Amazingly, there's still some things I'd like to add but haven't yet found! Oh well, 100 is enough to make a thoroughly different play-through experience I think.